Resource Pages

May 31, 2007

Quote of month - I tend to agree with Charlie Munger when he recently said running cars on fuel derived from corn "is about the dumbest idea I've ever seen." But no matter how much the investing geniuses and I agree on the economics, I think the political tailwind behind ethanol is unstoppable."

May 22, 2007

May 18, 2007

With a 52-5 vote in the Senate Wednesday, Illinois became only the second state to enact legislation requiring green cleaning in schools. The act will require all elementary and secondary schools in Illinois to purchase environmentally sensitive cleaning supplies, which are now cost-comparable and equally effective to conventional cleaning products. The bill authorizes the Green Government Coordinating Council to determine specific standards for green products within six months. Schools will develop plans for meeting the standards within three months of the standards' development, but may continue using their current stock of cleaning supplies until it is depleted. Source: Healthy Schools Campaign, (VIA- glrppr.org)

Environmental stewardship is the responsibility for environmental quality shared by all those whose actions affect the environment. Everyday, more than 300 million Americans make countless choices that can impact our environment. By being an active environmental steward you can reduce those impacts and make a difference in the kind of world we live in today and pass on to future generations.

As the leading environmental agency in the United States, EPA has an important role to play in promoting environmental stewardship-by individuals, communities, businesses and other organizations, and by our partners throughout government.

May 16, 2007

UIUC's LAS News - When a plume of contaminated groundwater from a manufacturing plant near Las Vegas seeped into the Colorado River, the contaminant "perchlorate" spread throughout the Southwest. The cleanup could take decades.

To aid with such catastrophic cleanups, LAS researchers from the University of Illinois have developed a new chemical catalyst that can help remove and destroy perchlorate in contaminated water. Read the full story

May 15, 2007

MADISON  Reports over the weekend that a new viral fish disease likely killed fish in the Lake Winnebago System is spurring Wisconsin fisheries officials to seek to expand the reach of emergency rules aimed at preventing viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, from spreading to new waters.

Fisheries officials will ask the state Natural Resources Board to meet in a special session Thursday, May 17, to consider expanding key emergency rule requirements beyond Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, the Mississippi River and their tributaries. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. in Room 613 of the State Natural Resources Building (GEF 2), 101 S. Webster St., Madison.

"When we originally went to the Natural Resources Board in April, they made it clear to us that if VHS was found outside Lake Michigan, Lake Superior and the Mississippi River, they wanted us to come back and they would consider extending the rules to new waters or statewide," Staggs says. "That's what we're doing now that initial tests indicate the disease has spread to the Lake Winnebago system."

VHS is not a health threat to people who handle infected fish or want to eat their catch, but it can kill more than 25 fish species, causing them to bleed to death.

"We have a great working relationship with Cal/OSHA and they've bent over backwards to work with us." Marcella McCormack, administrator of the Veterans Home of California at Yountville, about the facility's avoidance of nearly $40,000 in workplace safety penalties Go to the full story in the Napa Valley Register

FROM MSN: It turns out that we wouldn't have to cut consumption by 40 percent or 30 percent or even 20 percent to send pump prices lower. Try 7 percent.

That's how much demand fell off last winter. After peaking at 9.7 million barrels in the week of Aug. 4, 2006, U.S. gasoline demand hit a low of 9.0 million barrels during the week of Jan. 19, 2007  a difference of 7 percent. During the same period, the average U.S. price peaked at $3.083 in August and fell to $2.213 by the end of January  a drop of 28 percent.

But what comes next? Compact fluorescent bulbs are the only real alternative right now, but "bulbs" that use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are quickly emerging as a challenger.Department of Energy, and widespread use of LED lighting could cut consumption in half. By 2027, LED lighting could cut annual energy use by the equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil, with the attendant reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for global warming.

The energy efficiency is no doubt a draw for commercial clients like hotels, but LEDs have another big advantage: they last up to 50,000 hours, according to manufacturers. That compares to about 10,000 hours for fluorescents and 1,000 hours for incandescents. Not having to send out janitors to replace burned-out bulbs means big savings in maintenance costs.

LEDs already beat fluorescents for energy efficiency in some niche uses. For instance, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is putting LED lighting in its in-store refrigerators, where the cold dims fluorescents and incandescents produce too much heat. LEDs also starting to replace flat fluorescent backlights in liquid-crystal displays, or LCDs, where they produce better colors.

LEDs don't contain toxic mercury, which CFLs do, though the amount is very small. (Recent stories circulating on the Web about calling a hazmat team if a CFL breaks are exaggerated. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends sweeping up, not vacuuming, the fragments, then checking out local recycling options.) The cost of LED lighting should be coming down quickly. Polybrite founder Carl Scianna said the cost of individual white-light diodes, several of which go into an LED bulb and make up much of the cost, have come down in price from about $8 to $1.50 in a year.

Far from being the salvation of an oil-hungry society, biofuels could actually trigger increases in food prices and deforestation, according to a report.

It doesn't suggest doing away with them altogether, but says that current targets for swapping petrol and diesel for fuel derived from crops are too ambitious.

The UK government, and the European Union have set their sights on using biofuels in 10 per cent of our cars by 2020. But the Co-op's report suggests that to produce this amount of fuel on a global scale would require as much as nine per cent of arable land being diverted to fuel crops.

Professor Dieter Helm, who sits of the government's Council for Science and Technology, told the BBC: "The sort of targets being set for biofuels will have quite radical effects on agriculture and therefore will have very substantial consequences for food prices and agriculture more generally."

He points out that rainforest is already being felled to make way for fuel crops.

"Think of the energy involved in felling those rainforests. Think about the damage to the climate being done by the loss of those trees. Think about the ploughing and the cultivation of fields. Think about the transport of those fuels, and you start to realize the carbon imprints are about much more than simply what happens to grow in a particular field at a particular point in time."

I would contend that ANY vehicle can be modified to run "bio-fuels" and reduce emissions 50% for $1,000 - 3,000 per vehicle (the same blank check given to hybrids).

Seriously, my car gets a solid 36 mpg and Toyota has been selling a 36 mpg hybrid minivan (Estima) in Japan since 2006. This is the type of vehicle that really should be used more often in the US... http://toyota.jp/estimahybrid/

Environmental conditions are already approaching apocalyptic in a country where coal provides 70 percent of the country's power. Chinese scientists have predicted that the Yangtze River will die by 2011, and with two-thirds of other rivers polluted, more than 340 million Chinese lack access to clean drinking water. An estimated 400,000 Chinese die of pollution every year. By the government's own estimates released in December 2006, climate change is occurring in China at alarming rates, with temperatures due to increase by 1.3 to 2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020. China is unveiling forward-thinking policies and pushing alternative energy because it has no other choice.

"SUNSHINE, our greatest source of potential power, is now largely wasted. It is highly probable, however, that a few years hence science will find a way to harness the mighty energy of the sun's radiation. Solar engines and solar heating apparatus will then make it economically practicable for us to use at least a small portion of our now-wasted sunshine to run our factories, light our streets, cook our food, and warm our houses. In the United States we use, each year, something like a half billion tons of coal, a half billion barrels of oil, and fifty billion horsepower hours of water power for heat, light, and power.

If it were possible to convert all this energy into powerwhich of course it isn'tit would produce seven trillion horsepower hours. If it were possible to convert completely into power all the solar energy that each year falls on the United States in the form of sunshine, it would amount to seven thousand trillion horsepower hours. Of course, some of the sunshine that comes to us through 93,000,000 miles of space is needed for the general heating of the earth and for the growing of plant life: but above those fundamental needs, solar radiation provides a potential supply of power many thousand times as great as the amount now supplied by other sources".

That the use of solar radiation for power is no vague dream of the far-distant future is shown by the fact that at present a solar power plant with a thermal efficiency of 4.32 per cent over one third of the efficiency of the best steam enginehas been built and is being operated.

Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the world's leading authority on solar radiation, says that before long we shall find a commercially practicable method of harnessing sunshine. "Financial success probably awaits the solver of the problems of collecting solar heat for power purposes," he says. "With our present outlook it seems to me likely that within another generation or two power demands will lead to the sun as the most available source of supply."

May 8, 2007

Fed-OSHA fines a Milwaukee company and a mechanical contractor nearly $73,000 in total penalties related to a propane explosion that killed three workers and injured four dozen more last December. Go to the Full Story...

OSHA Quote of day:"It's not some carcinogen where you get cancer 30 years from now or something. The people are dying right in front of you. You can't wait until you have all the evidence. You have to regulate it."

David Michaels, of George Washington University's department of environmental and occupational health, on Fed-OSHA's responsibility to regulate the artificial flavoring chemical diacetyl Go to the full story in the Washington Post

Navy scientists claim that slices of CR-39 plastic. . . have recorded the passage of atomic particles emitted during successful cold fusion nuclear reactions. New proof that cold fusion works could fuel additional interest in generating power from low energy nuclear reactions

Cold fusion, the ability to generate nuclear power at room temperatures, has proven to be a highly elusive feat. In fact, it is considered by many experts to be a mere pipe dream - a potentially unlimited source of clean energy that remains tantalizing, but so far unattainable.

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder from serious nuclear physicists since 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were unable to substantiate their sensational claims that deuterium nuclei could be forced to fuse and release excess energy at room temperature. Spawar researchers apparently kept the faith, however, and continued to refine the procedure by experimenting with new fusionable materials. . . Read more & more

America's best-selling bottled water and one that claims to be "pure water" with a "perfect taste." The label doesn't mention that the Aquafina sold in Michigan comes from the city of Detroit's water system. Corporate watchdogs and environmentalists are pressuring water bottling companies to disclose the source of their water. Critics accuse companies like Pepsi (Aquafina) and Coke (Dasani) of hypocrisy by promoting bottled water as a healthier alternative to tap water when those products are, in fact, purified tap water. . .

"People are paying a very high premium for the luxury of having a carry-along water bottle," Kuhn said. "I tell people that I can sell them 748 gallons of water for $1.40."

To put it another way, homeowners in Muskegon could spend $1.40 and fill 4,787 20-ounce containers with Muskegon tap water. Or they could buy one 20-ounce bottle of Aquafina, Dasani or Ice Mountain water for about $1.

May 3, 2007

Work-related asthma is the fastest growing occupational disease, costing employers 18 million working days annually; however, almost all cases of occupational asthma can be prevented. Workplace Law (U.K.)Go to the Full Story...

NUKE IS CLEAN & FREEENERGY (Read more by - Allison Gorman of Business Tennessee magazine)Not so,says David Freeman, the former TVA chairman largely credited with putting the brakes on the utility's nuclear construction in the 1980s. "We had to shut them down, even though they were under construction, because they cost too much," he recalls. "We didn't shut those plants down on account of their being unsafe. That should have been a reason, but it was the economics."

Some 20 years later, as TVA still carries most of the debt from its first nuclear program, the nation's largest public utility is poised to incur further debt to launch a second wave of nuclear construction...

Nationwide, utilities that had invested in the promise of clean, relatively inexpensive nuclear energy instead faced spiraling cost overruns compounded by stricter federal regulation... The result was a $27.7 billion debtmost of which is still with TVA, and the cost of which has been shouldered entirely by the utility's ratepayers, who don't have stockholders to share the burden. Most utilities are heavily indebted, with an acceptable debt load averaging 50% to 60% of assets, says economist Dennis Logue. And while changes in TVA's reporting methods complicate a direct comparison of its 1997 and 2007 balance sheets, they indicate a decrease in the utility's debts-to-assets ratio from 80% to about 73% over the past decade.

But even the most ambitious initiatives won't fulfill TVA's future generation needs, Kilgore says. Its five working nuclear reactors operate near capacity, its hydroelectric potential is finite, and according to TVA, the high ratio of cost to output doesn't justify large-scale use of ultra-green solar and wind power. Clean-burning natural gas is currently triple the cost of coal, and Kilgore says clean coal gasification technology still needs to be refined. With 57% of its current generation from fossil fuel plants, TVA has spent $4.6 billion just to stay in line with the EPA's tightening air pollution controls requirements and almost certainly faces more restrictive legislation in the future. While retrofit technology will stretch the lifetime of some coal-burning units by decades, Kilgore says, about 10 of TVA's 59 coal units are candidates for decommissioning within the next 10 to 20 years. Already, TVA meets peak demand with $1 billion annually in purchased power, which in 2006 translated roughly to 1.26 million homes worth of power. (Kilgore says that cost necessitated its two most recent rate hikes.)

Assuming other generation sources remain constant, TVA could increase its percentage of nuclear generation from 29% to 41% of its energy portfolio within a decade. TVA's stated goal is to have the largest nuclear generation capacity of any utility in the United States.

Industry advocates point to heavily nuclear France and Japan as evidence that nuclear technologies can operate reliably and safely on a large scale. Currently, TVA's nuclear generation is highly reliable, operating at about 90% capacity. Twenty years ago, Pulsipher says, 60% was considered optimal.

May 2, 2007

Sustainability in the developed and developing world requires scientific and technical innovations to create designs that enable the Earth and its inhabitants to prosper. The Expo and the EPA's P3 Award are demonstrating the possibilities of innovative designs to simultaneously benefit people, prosperity, and the planet.

Washington, D.C. George Gray, Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of Research and Development, today announced the winners of EPA's 3rd Annual P3 Awards  People, Prosperity, and the Planet. Six student teams from Appalachian State University, Lehigh University, Northwestern University, of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Virginia, and Western Washington University won the awards by competing at EPA's National Sustainable Design Expo. [Read More]

May 14-15, 2007Minneapolis, MNOnline Registration closes May 7thPresented by Hospitals for a Healthy Environment

H2E Environmental Excellence AwardsH2E's Environmental Excellence Awards celebrate healthcare's environmental leaders, who are engaging in pioneering environmental initiatives and helping build momentum for environmentally responsible healthcare. One hundred and twenty eight organizations will receive a total of 146 awards across five categories for their outstanding work! This year also marks the inauguration of H2E's new "hall of fame"the Environmental Leadership Circle. More details here.

Pharmaceutical Waste Management WorkshopEffectively managing pharmaceuticals in your facility means reducing waste and improving compliance while providing a safer environment for patients, staff, and the community. Learn about the newest best practice developments and how to make positive changes at your facility by attending the Pharmaceutical Waste Management Workshop. More details here.

Keynote Speaker Pete MyersThe Environmental Excellence Summit's keynote speaker, author Pete Myers, will discuss the emerging science on low-level chemical exposures, hormone disruption, and efforts to reduce the effects of synthetic chemical contamination. Myers' compelling analysis of what is at stake if we fail to address low level chemical exposures underlines the need to minimize the use of toxic materials in health care delivery. More on Pete Myers here.

Trash Flower Contest!Win an eco-gift basket by developing the wackiest (or loveliest!) flower arrangement you can out of your facility's trash. This annual event brings out the artist in all of usand tells a story about the many ways to employ materials after use! More on the contest here.

Compact fluorescents are controversial, and their mercury content is a concern. We have had a number of commenter's note that it costs thousands to clean up a room if you drop a bulb; one demanded "real scientific responses only, please" which counted me out, but Helen Suh Macintosh answered it here yesterday. But where did this $ 2000 cleanup idea come from? The myth started with an article by Steve Milloy published on Fox News ...

Site Info & Links

Optimism and an open mind are the most radical political acts there
are.

We have thousands of energy options that can save our economy and planet without
sacrificing our resources or lifestyles.

The general public only hears of the few options that line the pockets of the
few that result in the suffering of the many.

The public information on this website makes it easy for anyone to clearly
understand how viable and abundant our future can really be.

We are not activists,
treehuggers or politicians...
we are EHS
professionals who have thoroughly enjoyed everything this planet and its people
have offered us and want to extend the quality of life for both.

NOTE: I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.
And although I often blog about disagreements, it is
VERY important to understand that I agreed more with the ideas of
President Obama and Dr. Chu than disagreed. (it is just part of
democracy, it gives balance and is vital)

My Companies Websites:

Getting up every morning before 4am... the only thing that looks good is
coffee.

I do not think President Obama regularly drank coffee we he was in senate,

but he may want to try it on his new job.

WARNING: coffee is harmful to the
environment, small woodland animals and people who like to maintain status quo

The blog provides information of a general & public nature regarding national or other developments. None of the information contained herein is intended as legal advice or opinions relative to specific matters, facts, situations or issues. Additional facts, information or future developments may affect the subjects addressed in this blog. You should consult with an expert about your particular circumstances before acting on any of this information because it may not be applicable to your situation. This blog contains information and links to sites which are not owned or maintained by myself. I am not responsible for the content, linked sites, and the views expressed on linked sites do not necessarily reflect my views or opinions. The information contained herein is provided for personal, non-commercial, educational, entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute a guarantee of information or facts. I make no claims, expressed, implied, or statutory regarding the accuracy, timeliness, completeness, or correctness of any material contained herein. Since the conditions of use are outside my control, the individual visitor is entirely responsible for determining the appropriateness and applicability of all information contained herein.

What are our
favorite blog feeds?
----------------------------------------
There is not enough room to list all...but, Here are a few good ones in no
particular order. The best one would be EHS News
of course ;-)